Such a reply strikes as inadmissible the moment it does not come hand-in-hand with an initiative to determine which administration is in charge of carrying out the decision in question. This is not an isolated situation, and constitutes an extended violation of the right to maintain family ties. What is more, the Chief Inspector has often received referrals from people who have been unable to benefit from authorisations to take escorted leave – which were nevertheless granted by the judges. The difficulties raised concern understaffing or that there was not enough time to plan for the escort. And yet such authorisations are usually granted under exceptional circumstances, when there has been a birth or a death for example, which are by nature unplanned. Over and above the disappointment sparked by such a sudden reversal of the situation, in a context already often fraught with tension and emotion, refusing to go ahead with an authorisation to take escorted leave violates the right to maintain family ties. The prison administration must devote sufficient staff numbers to these fundamental missions for respecting prisoners' rights. Moreover, it appears judicious for the gendarmerie and police forces to be able to reinforce prison administration staff numbers where there are shortages, by extending the reinforcement possibilities stipulated in Article D.57 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The Chief Inspector also receives regular referrals of the situation of prisoners who, once transferred to another institution by the gendarmerie or police forces, are forced to temporarily leave behind their property in the initial institution because it has refused to transport it. Lastly, a number of difficulties have been reported to the Chief Inspector on the matter of external movements for medical reasons. The Minister of Justice's attention has already been drawn to this subject on several occasions – not least in the opinion on the treatment of prisoners in health facilities, published in the Journal officiel de la République française (Official Gazette of the French Republic) on 16 July 2015. Indeed, a number of such movements are cancelled or postponed because of a shortage of escorts. These decisions violate prisoners' rights to access health care, sometimes with the risk of exposing them to dire consequences. The Chief Inspector has reiterated the recommendations set out in the aforementioned opinion and called for discussions to be initiated swiftly between the Ministries of Health -Justicethe Interior with a view to improving the implementation of external movements for medical reasons. The Chief Inspector has called upon the Ministers of Justice and the Interior to address these difficulties. It is still awaiting a response. 3.3 Basque prisoners' rights to maintain family ties The Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté has often had cause to speak out on issues relating to prisoners' rights to the respect of privacy and family life and maintaining family ties. As fundamental rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and in Article 35 of the Prison Act of 24 November 2009, they also come up time and again in referrals that the Chief Inspector receives because violations of the right to maintain family ties are such painful experiences for prisoners, who are deprived from seeing their loved ones on a daily basis. In 2016, the Chief Inspector received scores of reports concerning the situation of untried and convicted Basque prisoners alike. It appears that they are very seldom able to be assigned to a prison close to home, since they are subject to an assignment policy aimed at systematically allocating them France-wide, in which they find themselves a long way away from their family and 80